CD ripping with a ROCK based machine in the future?

I understand that some ripping software, including dBpoweramp, can specify an output path that can include a network drive. Send it straight to a Roon folder on the ROCK if you don’t want to check it through an intermediate folder.

Because this can be easily done using existing ripping software on the machine with the cd reader, I think it likely to be a low priority for Roon.

This is also what I do.

While I currently have Roon running on my MacBook Pro, when I get my music PC up and running (i5 mini-ITX fanless PC running Arch Linux), I plan to just tell iTunes that my library is on the fanless PC’s disk.

I agree dbpoweramp is the cats meow in terms of this. Recall that Spoon, the developer, also developed a product called RipNAS, which was a server and cd ripper in one which would automatically place validated rips into the watched library automatically. Pretty slick for someone who doesn’t want to go through the multiple steps to do it manually. IMHO, I think ROON should be talking to the people supporting RipNAS. they use WHS2011 right now as their OS with mods and rely on the dbpoweramp products to do the heavy lifting. It would be pretty cool if the next generation of RipNAS was running ROCK and still had its dbpoweramp products doing the ripping lifting.

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Would love Roon to have a rip straight to database system +1 for me :slight_smile:

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Macmini and iTunes is the best ripper for my classical cd’s.

Does iTunes rip to ALAC now? as iTunes to AAC would be a shame for all you classical CD’s.

iTunes has ripped to ALAC for years and years.

You can tell I haven’t liked it for years and years then :slight_smile:

Longer than I thought though.

Pity my macs won’t let me delete it.

and does a good meta job for ripping classical.

Here’s how I have set it up:

I have 2 folders set up in Roon, one with the library and one called import.
I use XLD to Rip and Bliss to tag. Bliss will auto tag and organise whatever is in the import folder.

1. Rip with XLD to import folder (Music is immediately picked up by Roon) 
2. When convenient, fire up Bliss and scan the import folder
3. After Bliss is done, move the folders into the library folder

I your music is on a NAS, you have to force a rescan, otherwise is works really well.

Only downside is that MacOS does not merge folders on copy by default, but overwrites, so if you’re adding a new album from an artist that already exist in the library you would have to move the album folder from the import folder to the artist folder in the library. But the music will be available in Roon no matter if it’s in the import folder or the library, so you can postpone this step to whenever you have the time.

I have all the suggested pieces to assemble a NUC i7 server which at the moment I am trying to get Roon Rock to load it onto a Thumb drive for transfer.And wish to just start out simply with maybe a couple hundred CD’s from my library and was as well wondering if Roon made provisions just hooking up a external optical drive and do a direct Ripp to a second internal drive in the NUC?

Yes, the ROCK system will do that now. Just put your CD in the USB CD-ROM and it will rip the music to the internal storage device. It also does it’s best to match the music to existing metadata to identify the music for your database.
Personally, I think dbPoweramp does a better job. But this works fine as a turnkey solution.
https://kb.roonlabs.com/Roon_OS_CDROM

Thanks for the reply back good to know.Still thinking doing this process externally using a full size Plextor PX-891SAF optical in a External OWC Mercury PRO USB 3.1 case and using dbPoweramp for ripping.

I’m happy this feature exists but I think the ripping feature would be more universally helpful if it tagged and named the tracks. With Rock ripping, it is a little more tedious overall curating the files if you’re also using the flac rips outside of Roon.

If I want to use FLAC rips on my Android smartphone, I just use Roon’s Export feature to copy the rips into my Music folder on my phone. Roon puts in all the metadata that is needed during the export process.

Wonder why Roon represents the stored data in such an obscure way? I suppose they figure what’s behind the database (the file structures) doesn’t really matter to a person using Roon this way. But it would be so easy to give the folder a name that had a meaning to a human.
Roon does seem to have a thing about folder structures.

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They don’t do anything “obscure”, IMO. Folders (in a root folder called “CD-Rips”) are given the name of the date and timestamp of the CD rip, and tracks are numbered sequentially. All the relevant metadata is, as always, held in the Roon database.

As you say, this is all pretty irrelevant to the casual Roon user, and you can always find out precisely where the files are being held if you really want to.

When it comes to exporting an album - I do just that - export an album; I don’t worry where, precisely, the files and folders are, or what they are called. I just don’t need to know this.

Yeah, this is probably my problem rather than Roon’s problem. My SOP is to identify the music I want to move by folder (by File Explorer or via JRiver) and then I drop that folder onto my USB drive. So the folder naming convention messes me up.
If I went the path of least resistance and allowed myself to not be so structured in my ways, I’d just export the music using that function.

Use the Force, Scott! :grinning:

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